What are the Different Regions in JVM Memory ?

Heap memory

The heap memory is the runtime data area from which the Java VM allocates memory for all class instances and arrays. The heap may be of a fixed or variable size. The garbage collector is an automatic memory management system that reclaims heap memory for objects.

Eden Space: When an object is newly constructed it’s created in the Young Generation. In most of the applications, most of the objects are short-lived objects. i.e. they will die soon. Thus they will be collected as garbage within the Young Generation itself.

Survivor Space: The pool containing objects that have survived the garbage collection of the Eden space. Objects that survive Minor GC are not directly promoted to the Old Generation. They are kept in the Survivor region for a certain number of Minor GC collections. Only if they survive certain number of Minor GC collections then they will be promoted to the Old Generation.

Tenured Generation: The pool containing objects that have existed for some time in the survivor space. Example: Application Context, HTTP Sessions, Caches, Connection Pools, etc. Those long-lived objects are promoted to old generation.

Non-heap memory

Non-heap memory includes a method area shared among all threads and memory required for the internal processing or optimization for the Java VM. It stores per-class structures such as a runtime constant pool, field and method data, and the code for methods and constructors. The method area is logically part of the heap but, depending on the implementation, a Java VM may not garbage collect or compact it. Like the heap memory, the method area may be of a fixed or variable size. The memory for the method area does not need to be contiguous.

Permanent Generation/ Perm Generation : The pool containing all the reflective data of the virtual machine itself, such as class and method objects. With Java VMs that use class data sharing, this generation is divided into read-only and read-write areas.

Code Cache: The HotSpot Java VM also includes a code cache, containing memory that is used for compilation and storage of native code.

Starting with Java 8, the perm generation has been replaced with Metaspace for performance reasons.